


The clock that beats with my heart so I never wake up.

by MarauderCracker



Category: Glee
Genre: Depression, M/M, Suicide Attempt, all the poems belong to alejandra pizarnik, vague mentions of drug use (including cocaine)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 14:56:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2154783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Look for. It’s not a verb but a vertigo. It doesn’t indicate any action. It doesn’t mean going to encounter someone but laying because someone doesn’t come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The clock that beats with my heart so I never wake up.

_I_

_it’s not true that he’ll come. it’s not true that he won’t._

Sebastian thinks that an overly dramatic person as Kurt would do something different. He would call or make a whole scandal over it or maybe… Maybe… He doesn’t know. Sebastian thinks and doesn’t know and asks the cabby if he can smoke inside the car because please, please, he really needs a smoke. His hands shake.

He sends another text and there’s still no answer, still no answer, still no answer. He inhales deeply, and counts the seconds and tries to count the minutes between Kurt’s first message, Santana’s text and the current time. It’s been an hour, an hour and probably Kurt knew about it earlier. Maybe two hours. Probably two hours. Sebastian thinks. Sebastian doesn’t know.

_II_

_and someone enters death with eyes open, like Alice in the land of the already seen_

He throws a hundred dollar bill to the cabby and runs up the stairs still thinking, thinking about how happy the man must feel right now. And his hands shake when he tries to fit the keys in the lock, and he has to lean against the door frame for a second before remembering how to breathe.

The door bangs against the wall when he finally opens it, vibrating through Sebastian’s entire body. He leaves it open and runs into the apartment, and looks around, and his hands are still shaking. And he thinks but doesn’t know, but he tries opening the bathroom’s door first anyway.

_III_

_what would the world say if god had abandoned him like this?_

It’s like that frame from a movie, that frame you think could be a Robert Capa’s photograph or a Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting. That frame that stays imprinted in the back of your eyelids for weeks. Like Marla letting the smoke slide out of her mouth in Fight Club. Like Alex’s smile in A Clockwork Orange. 

First is the feet, the feet out of the bathtub, hanging limp from the brink. To the left of them, on the brim, are an empty bottle of rum and a small canister with only one pill left. And then the feet turn into long legs fitted tight into the skinny jeans, the jeans that are turning pink in a few places; the jeans that end low in the boy’s hips, right where his right hand has dropped. The streaks of blood that flow from the wrist go up before dissolving in the surface. The left hand is still leaning over the border; the slit wrist against the tile. Part of the blood drips down into the bathtub, but it seems like the hand was in a different position not so long ago, and a lot of it has dripped and smeared all along the palm and the fingers. A cigarette is still barely holding between the index and the middle finger.

Kurt’s face is pale and peaceful and his nose is just a bit above the water, only a second from slipping under the surface, only a second from letting that cigarette fall to the floor, but he doesn’t seem to be breathing. Sebastian’s hands shake.

_IV_

_the cage has become a bird. what will I do with the fear?_

Santana finds Sebastian sitting outside the hospital, shaking. Not shivering, though it’s cold and he’s only in a sweater, but shaking. He looks up at his friend, his fists tight and eyes desperate, as she lights up a cigarette and hands it to him.

The first drag is so deep it burns a little in the back of his throat, like it used to when he first started smoking. He holds the smoke in for a while, just like he’d do if he was smoking weed. Trying to ignore everything he’s read and heard about nicotine not actually relieving any stress, and just hoping that it’s all a lie and this way the nicotine sets in faster and makes his heart go slower. 

He needs it to stop hurting. The fear that beats against his ribs and claws at his lungs and tries to rip out of him in the for a scream, a sob, a prayer. He needs it to stop.

Santana sits next to him and lights a cigarette for herself. They stare at the flux of people in the street, not talking to each other, but Santana leans a hand on Sebastian’s need and, finally, he allows himself to let the tears fall. 

_V_

_want to stay wanting to go_

It’s one am when Sebastian brings Kurt to the ER, almost two when Santana arrives, fifteen minutes past three when she says that she really needs to go. That she’ll tell Rachel. Everything is going to be alright. Kurt is going to be alright. She’ll be back in the morning. 

Sebastian can’t force himself to leave. The nurses won’t let him check on Kurt, so he sleeps in the plastic chairs in the hallways. (He doesn’t really sleep. He just lays there, with the space between the two chairs making his position awkward and uncomfortable, shivering from how cold the corridors of the hospital are, wishing he could control the tears that escape him now and then.)

When the sun rises Sebastian is sitting in the stairs that lead to the hospital’s doors, and his hands still shake but he can’t blame it on the cold and he isn’t crying anymore. He doesn’t have any more tears.

_VI_

_there’s no silence here, but sentences you refuse to hear_

Kurt wakes up for a few seconds that day, just enough to see Sebastian’s form sleeping in a chair next to the bed, with his head leaned against Kurt’s legs. Before his mind can fully process what’s going on, he passes out again.

The next time the sedatives wear off enough to let him open his eyes, Santana has her legs over the bed and is swinging the chair while she hums a Lana del Rey’s song. Kurt tries to talk to her but his voice is hoarse, and he only gets to emit a soft groan. By the time Santana gets a nurse to bring him water, Kurt has drifted back into unconsciousness. This time, he spent enough time awake to remember what happened.

(He dreams of his father in a casket, he dreams of Carole crying; and his dreams let a few memories slip in, let him remember the sharp pain on his wrists and the numbness starting to spread as the blood loss became too. He dreams of a funeral he didn’t got to attend and the droplets of blood dissolving in the water.)

The third time he’s really lucid. Sebastian is on the phone, giving his profile to Kurt. He’s playing with an unlit cigarette between his fingers and his voice sounds shaky, like he’s about to cry. “I didn’t knew about Burt until yesterday. I… I didn’t understand. I just…” Sebastian walks towards the door, still listening to the phone. When he turns around to look at Kurt, Kurt pretends to be asleep.

_VII_

_sing like nothing’s happening, and nothing happens_

Now that he knows that Kurt is going to be fine, Sebastian leaves him under Santana’s care. Rachel is in Ohio, helping Carole with Burt’s funeral. Santana is the one dealing with her over the phone, getting her to promise that she won’t tell about Kurt’s attempt, that she will swear that was just sick. Just sick. They can’t add another weight to that family.

Sebastian puts on his headphones and selects the most shallow playlist of them all. Rihanna and Lady Gaga and Yelle and Adam Lambert; Nikki Minaj and Kreayshawn. Dumb remixes and songs without lyrics, only the beat of the electronic drums.

It works for a while. Sebastian cleans up the apartment, carefully avoiding the bathroom, constantly stopping his mind from going by dangerous paths.

He’s still in the same clothes he was wearing two days before, he vaguely remembers eating a sandwich that Santana brought him and having infinite cups of the disgusting coffee from the hospital’s cafeteria, he hasn’t really slept yet. (But if he stops picking up cigarette stubs and scattered notes from college, if he lets his mind focus in anything other than the circular movement of the sponge over a dirty plate or the stains of wine in a glass; if he thinks, he’s going to break.)

_IIX_

_horror of looking your eyes in the space filled with the screams of the poem._

He finally has to enter. There’s no more excuses, only the half open door of the bathroom and the light from the small deadlight. Sebastian swallows hard, turns off his Ipod, reaches for his cigarettes with shaky fingers.

The door creaks a little, barely audible but Sebastian’s entire senses are in alert. He’s half expecting to open it completely and find the same picture again, that single frame that’s still imprinted in the back of his eyes. 

This time Kurt’s hand isn’t hanging from the rim of the bathtub but the pink water is still there and the tiles remain smudged with blood. The bottle of rum is now on the floor, knocked down when Sebastian pulled Kurt out of the water; and the last pill rolled somewhere between the cigarette bottoms in the floor.

(Sebastian finds the razor blades in the sink and his whole body convulses, and he’s vomiting all the bad coffees he took at the hospital. But that’s actually a relief, knowing that he can’t puke again when he takes a deep breath and sinks his hand in the bloody water to unclog the bathtub.)

_IX_

_For the words to not be enough it’s necessary a death inside your heart_

Santana brings Kurt to a perfectly clean apartment , to Sebastian sitting in the balcony, with a cigarette between his lips and a mug of cold coffee in his hand. Sebastian that doesn’t look at Kurt and Kurt that doesn’t look at Sebastian, and Santana leaving quietly, without commenting (just for once).

Susan, their neighbor, believes the excuse that Sebastian broke the shower while doing something stupid and probably perverted with another guy, and she lets them use hers for as long as she needs; because they always have condoms when her and her boyfriend are in need. They try not to look at the bathtub just as hard as they try not to look at each other’s eyes.

Kurt, who very seldom smoked before, doesn’t touch a cigarette again. It’s been days since he came back when he finally removes the bandages from his wrists, more than a week when he calls Carole to apologize and give his condolences and say that he’ll fly to Ohio when he can, that he’s spent two weeks with food poisoning and right now he just needs to catch up with life.

(Sebastian is the one that gets to see that Kurt definitely isn’t catching up with college, the one that silently watches him as Kurt tries and fails to get his life back together. And he stays quiet, he doesn’t comment, he doesn’t try to look Kurt to the eyes.

_X_

_well, this is life, this howl, this digging of nails in our chest_

Sebastian’s hands shake almost constantly. Sometimes they’re just barely trembling, sometimes the shaking is so intense he can’t even hold a pen or the cigarette. It’s almost like when he just had gotten to the States, that summer after Paris. Like the abstinence and his mind cracking under the need of something, a sedative, anything that would relieve the craving. But it’s been years since he’s consumed, years since he’s gotten over it. (Sometimes he still craves it, like right now, when just the idea of getting out of bed to face Kurt’s empty gaze and a day of fearing that he’ll come back to the apartment and find the bathtub full with pink water makes him sick. It would be just a hit, just a hit to make his body work properly again. And the days drag slowly and then slower.

He cracks on a Friday. (Kurt is in the balcony, playing with an unlit cigarette between his fingers and just looking down at the street, and he looks just so wrecked, so helpless.) Sebastian’s hand are steadier than ever when he opens the balcony’s door, when he touches Kurt’s shoulder to get his attention.

“This needs to stop,” he says. It’s maybe too blunt, and Kurt wraps his arms around himself, like he’s waiting for a blow. “Kurt…” (He really doesn’t now what to say. He wants it to stop, he needs it to stop, but he can’t find the reasons or the words to express them.) “Please.”

“Everything’s fine, Seb. I’m fine,” Kurt mutters. He’s not even trying to make it sound believable (that’s the worst part), he just sounds tired. Resigned. “I’m fine,” he repeats. 

“You can tell Santana that it was the shock of your dad’s death and you can swear to Rachel that it was food poisoning and you can smile to your classmates all you want, Kurt. But I’m here. I’m your best friend. I was your best friend, at least. And I know that you are not fine, you are not even a little better that you were when you came out of the hospital.”

(The words come out in a rush and sound too harsh and Kurt’s eyes are glassy. His lower lip trembles and Sebastian immediately regrets his words, gets a hold on Kurt’s sleeve and pulls him closer to wrap his arms around his shoulder and hug tight.)

“I can’t promise that I can make it better. I can’t promise anything, Kurt. But I’m here. I can try. I just… I can’t go through this again. I can’t lose you,” Sebastian says, talking against the crook of Kurt’s neck, just tightening his hold with every word. Slowly, hesitantly, Kurt hugs him back. Sebastian feels the tears against his shoulders (the first tears Kurt has allowed himself to cry since that day).

_XI_

_for a minute of brief life, unique, with open eyes_

Sebastian doesn’t drive too fast. The trip could be only twelve hours long but sometimes they stop in the side of the road to take a nap or in a gas station to buy coffee. It takes them almost an entire day to get to Ohio, but they don’t really mind. Kurt haves the chance to stare out the window, to listen to music, to cry.

It’s after Kurt has said goodbye to his father’s grave and hugged Carole and wandered around the streets of Lima with Sebastian by his side that they come back.

(Sebastian drives faster this time, and they blast loud annoying pop and sing along and Sebastian stops in the side of the highway to bring Kurt closer and hug him tight and kiss the scars in his forearms. And his hands don’t shake when he brings them up to cup Kurt’s jaw and kiss him in the mouth, and hold him close when he murmurs than “I don’t know how, but I will make everything better. And now I promise it. I can’t lose you.”)


End file.
